The most important thing is, if you have to go to war, then do everything you can not to go to war if at all possible. Then you’ve got to get the political end state right or you’ll never figure out how to end it successfully. War is such a tragedy and because in our society those decisions are made by civilians, and not by military, you’ve got to get that part right up front. Notice I left one war out and that was Desert Storm. In that war, President Bush, the first President Bush, said “we’re not going to tolerate a nation being taken over,” and went to war. And we went in, kicked them out of Kuwait, freed Kuwait, and then he would not go any further.
Some people said “oh we’re winning let’s charge into Baghdad.” He said “nope. all we’re going to do is free Kuwait.” Now, he got a lot of heat for that. But, we went in with more troops than we needed and we ended it quickly, because he had the political end state right.
The short answer is, get the political end state right and then give it the full effort and explain to the American people and the American congress what you’re doing and get the whole world behind you. Even the Russians helped us in that war by the way. They told us exactly what their radars they’d given Saddam Hussein could do so we knew where we could fly through the radar coverage. Even the Russians were on our side in that war. That shows what happens when you get the political end state right, unlike Korea, Vietnam, Iraq that sort of thing.
Right now, they’ve moved ballistic missiles down to Yemen that were shot into Saudi Arabia from Yemen. It’s going to be very hard to deal with them. What you have to do eventually is what then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did, which was to move sanctions, economic sanctions, against them and force them to the negotiating table because they want to stay in power.
And you keep asking these kind of questions Teddy. You’re asking good, very good questions and just try to keep an open mind. There’ll be a lot of people who want to tell you what to think in this world. If you read a lot of history you’ll thank them for their help but you won’t be governed by what someone else has told you to think.
